[meltmanbob]

Well I just wasted a few hours simply trying to get them to activate an old Hero so I at least had a phone I could use. I had to put up with some jackass "manager" from account services and then call back in to complain about him. The lady I spoke to about the complaint apparently had her boss listening in on the call and told her that they could waive the smartphone fee for the Hero but that it was some big exception and I'm guessing it had to do with me calling in simply to make the complaint. I am THOROUGHLY pissed with Sprint.

I mentioned that someone (leadpoizon) had been able to upgrade to the Arrive without the smartphone fee and even that jackass on the phone acknowledged that at some point there had been room to make accommodations like that. My point to him was that I had kept my eye on that phone since before it was out and had made several attempts to upgrade to it especially considering I've been eligible for the 2 year upgrade discount for almost a year now and no one had ever been able to work around the smartphone fee. My other point to him was that the fault falls on Sprint because I had kept up with it and yet never was told the "correct" information; if I had, I would have upgraded and never gotten to the degraded point I'm at now with my TP2. Either way these people are just glorified talking machines with no willingness or authority to do anything of substance.

I'm ready to go elsewhere. I hardly use my phone as it is and I'm done paying for the unlimited data service that I've kept around for the occasion that I will make use of it; which hasn't been in a very long time. It's really frustrating considering that at least 75% of the time I could easily get by with a $20 plan but have not gone elsewhere simply for those months where I do make full use of the service.

The suggestion for Tmobile sounds the best since it has unlimited data that just gets throttled but when I went on their site, that doesn't appear to be the case anymore. I really like having the full features available in case I need to use them and I absolutely hated previous plans I've had where I had to worry about overages which is why I sucked it up and got the unlimited plan. If you guys know more about the unlimited Tmobile plan that's not super expensive, let me know. Even though that sounds worse than Sprint once it is throttled, in reality those throttled speeds are still in the ballpark of what I got with Sprint without any throttling.